Hi,
I have thirty or so WNW kits on the shelf and have built several more. I would suggest the Junkers J.1 or the Rumpler for a first try. I am currently building the DFW and finding wonderfully detailed but a bit tricky in places.
Dave

Hi All,
The HGW rivets look great once applied, but I want to highlight Kevin's comment. I used a set designed for the WNW Albatros and I had numerous problems with the rivets releasing from the carrier film before application to the model. In fact, almost every row lost at least one rivet, if not more, and I ended up with a bunch of little black dots in the bottom of my bowl of water. That said, I have also read a number of glowing reports. This variability might reflect a quality control problem, but then it may be user error as well - perhaps the result of being left in the water for too long? If the latter, I would welcome some feed back. I have the set for the 1/32 FW 190D, they look great in the package and would love to see them work as advertised. Kevin, would you be up for an experiment? Take lengths of the same number and soak each for different lengths of time and see if it conditions the fail rate??
Dave

Hi Bob,
I would also recommend the RB Productions turnbuckles. I have used all three methods/products mentioned in above in the thread and for German subjects my preference is for Radu's product. I find them both a bit more in scale and much more cost effective. Gaspatch are the most realistic of the bunch and look great, but you need at least one set (30 turnbuckles) of Gaspatch turnbuckles for a single seat fighter and if you are doing a double bay aircraft you will need two. RB gives you 80 for less than half the price, but they are a bit two dimensional since they are photoetch. For RFC aircraft, I think short sections of tubing look more the part. Just my opinion, all three vendors are top-notch and which ever way you go, you will end up with a nice looking aircraft.
Dave

Hi Brent,
First, you have a LVG and I don't - that's not fair at all Second, you should know that I have not yet cut my own lozenge from the joined Aviattic sheets, but I will be doing so for my next build. I have used WNW's generic bolts as supplied with the LVG and much of what I lay out below comes from my experience with them.
Ok, here is how I would do this for the top wing (I hopped over to the WNW website and had a look at the instructions)... First, I would set each of the three wing portions on a piece of paper, and do so top up. Then, I would trace each. this will give you a general place to start, but since you have a cordwise curve, and one at the wingtips, just tracing the wing will give you an undersized measurement. Next, I would lay out a lengthwise centerline on my tracings and I would also draw in a line for each rib, get these as close to the center of each. I know that they are only about a mm wide, but get as close as you can. Now take a piece of tape and you are going to place it on the WNW part and parallel to one of the ribs so that one end overhangs the trailing edge ever so slightly. The other end should curve around the leading edge to just beyond half the leading edge thickness. Once this is cut to size, pull it off and measure its length. This is the true cordwise dimension for the top surface of the wing. Divide this length by 2, and then measure from your lengthwise centerline both the front and rear of your wing tracing and enlarge the pattern accordingly down the length of both leading and trailing edges. You will also have a curved surface at the end of the wings. In this case, place one end of a piece of tape on the centerline of the outermost rib and run it to the centerline of the edge of the wingtip. Pull it off, measure and add this distance to the length of the wing, but do so starting at the centerline of the last rib. You should now have patterns that represent the true surface dimensions of the upper wing surface. Flip your wings over and repeat for the lower surface.
I would cut the patterns lengthwise every four ribs or so and do so along a rib centerline. If you break the final decal up into multiple sections per wing you will find it much easier to work with. From what I have read, the joined edges of the fabric bolts should not rest on top of the ribs, the WNW instructions show then directly adjacent in several places. You are going to have to decide where the pattern will start for each wing, but keep the previous observation in mind as you decide how to lay out your wing patterns on the decals.
Now, since you have measurements that are slightly larger than half the total top + bottom cordwise distance, when you apply the decals you will have a dark line down the midline of the trailing and leading wing edges - this is a function of the transparent decals. Just apply the WNW rib tape over the overlap on the leading and trailing edges. Make sure that any overlap you have is less than the width of the rib tape decals. Getting the rib tape to conform to the trailing edge is oh so fun. I use solveset and once the decal softens, mold it into place with a soft, wide paintbrush - this is a real PIA. I have found using a number of shorter segments to be easier to deal with. When you apply the rib tape over the ribs, this will hide any mismatches between your decal edges. Do apply the rib tape to the ribs before you do the leading ad trailing edges.
Hope this makes at least a little sense. Feel free to have me clarify any of these statements.
Dave

Hi Petrov, Painting prop laminations seems intimidating and previously I accomplished the task with many small pieces of tape. But using my craft cutter, I have found a way to generate masks that result in clean, painted laminations. I just draw up a set of concentric ellipses as shown below and have my craft cutter cut the stencil - I am sure that with a steady hand you could cut one of these manually as well. It is difficult for me to sell you a set since I would need to index the stencil to a specific prop and anyway, I have no interest in going into business
All you need to do with the mask, once cut, is divide up into quarters and then apply the appropriate masks to your prop. I spray the entire prop a base color and then impose wood grain. I use my RB Productions stencil. I know it is overscale, but I think the result is more effective than "dragged oils." I then mask the laminations, spray the second color and then once again apply some wood grain. I seal everything with a 50/50 mix of Tamiya clear yellow and orange. Hope this helps - feel free to ask for clarification Dave

Hi All,
A short progress report on my Fokker.
Brent, I promised you something on the application of Aviattic decals, so here goes ....
First, I give the wing a solid coat of Tamiya gloss white followed with a Future clear coat. I found that using flat white as a base may result in some silvering. Aviattic's decal film seems to work best on a super smooth surface.
Once your basecoat is dry, then its easy to just slide the lozenge panels into place. I first brush on some microset and then apply the decal. Next, I cut a small piece from an old, clean t-shirt and used it to gently run my finger over each wing rib. I repeated this process several times until the stitching detail was apparent through the decal. You need to be careful here, since it is possible to damage the decal, but I found that this technique resulted in the film conforming precisely to the underlying stitching detail. Leading and trailing edge lozenge tape was sourced from left-over WNW decals. I let the decals dry and then weathered them with some Tamiya smoke - sprayed over masked rib tapes - and a series of burnt umber filters and washes. These decals are transparent, so one can do some slick stuff with pre-shading, but I choose to post shade so that the wing fabric, national insignia and "Mimmi" were all weathered consistently. I will likely try preshading next time I build a plane with lozenge fabric.
Finally, I panted up the prop. I used my craft cutter to make a set of masks for the laminations and used the RB Productions wood grain stencil to add some texture.
Ok, that's what I have today.
Everyone keep up the good work.
Dave

Hi All,
Here are a couple of items I masked yesterday with stencils generated by a Silhouette Portrait cutter. I have been using sheets of Tamiya masking material for my stencils.
The stars are 3 mm tall. I think I could have made them smaller. The inner wheel covers where masked with home made masks as well. The software will let you size items to the nearest tenth of a millimeter, so you can fit a mask fairly closely to just about any shape.
I created a series of stretched out ovals to mask the wood laminations. These are less than 1 mm in width in places. You can see other examples in my Fokker D.VIIF build. I find myself using it to create masks for items I would have recently tried to hand paint - especially round items.
Hope this helps provide some scale to the cutters capabilities.
Cheers
Dave